Weblog

I'm sick and pretty much have been all week. I've only gone to one class, and, while I was there, I proceeded to sleep my way through the class in the front row. Despite the sickness, I still managed to go to a concert shindig of a travelling band from Kenya. I sat in the audience trying to appreciate the beauty of their culture. Somehow, I felt uncomfortable that everyone else was treating the event as a novelty. For me, it was important to keep in mind that the oddities that we laugh at are completely normal for another culture and should be treated as such. Anyway, I don't know why I'm even bringing it up: they weren't offended and… that's not even what I wanted to talk about.

After the event, there was another event — an international coffee house. Personally, I hate coffee. It is the devil's drink. I would eradicate it from the earth and replace it with tea just because it tastes better and is healthier for you. However, the word international is magical to me. So… I went.

I sat around and sipped my tea for a long time period. It wasn't until the end that I had made a shocking realisation: I was one of maybe three Americans¹ in a room of nearly thirty or forty. It just amazed me how everyone in this room had one thing in common: none of them were from America. However, I held the thing that none of them held in common, but I was really in my element. Plus, I was good at it. I wasn't even trying, but native Spanish speakers were convinced that I was from Spain or at least lived there simply because of my accent.

I met a woman from Kenya named Alfreda who was majoring in communications at a university in Africa. I met two women who were from Nicaragua and another whose mother was from the same town as my sister. Throughout the course of the evening, people from four different continents listened to songs in Spanish, English, Italian, Swahili and other African languages.

I don't understand what it is about the world that's outside of this country that I love so much. I'm just dying to get out there and live among them. I really have no love for America. I mean, I have a baseball cap of my favourite team that I won't wear just because it has an American flag on it.²

---

1. If you can really call me an American.
2. They lost, by the way.